Fashion choice or subtle act of protest?
The International Space Station’s newly arrived trio of Russian cosmonauts came aboard on Friday dressed in yellow flight suits with blue accents, echoing the color scheme of the Ukrainian flag. It’s a notable look given that Commander Oleg Artemyev had been seen wearing a blue flight suit during the docking process.
No one specifically mentioned Ukraine, but the color choice is notable given that Artemyev, along with fellow cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, are the first to arrive aboard the ISS since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Artemyev explained after the boarding was complete that each crew chooses its own flight suit colors.
“It became our turn to pick a color,” he said (h/t Associated Press). “But in fact, we had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it. So that’s why we had to wear yellow.”
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It’s hard not to clock the significance of seeing Ukrainian colors splashed across cosmonaut flight suits, however. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s widely condemned invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by an online disinformation campaign intended to falsely paint the seemingly illegal military action as a heroic endeavor.
Tech companies are working to neutralize those disinformation efforts and isolate Russia financially, but Ukrainian iconography — such as the flag’s colors and the country’s national flower, the sunflower — has also become a way for people to express support (and raise awareness) online. Any ISS arrival is a cool space moment that has the potential to go viral, so whether it was intended or not, the yellow-and-blue flight suits left a mark.
The arrival of Artemyev, Matveev, and Korsakov marks the start of their six-month mission in space. They’re replacing cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov who, along with NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, are scheduled to head back to Earth on March 30.
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